Wide Bay · Queensland
Maryborough
Where Mary Poppins was born
- Settled
- 1847
- Port of entry
- 1859
- Immigrants landed
- 22,000+
- From Brisbane
- 3 hours
Three hours north of Brisbane the Bruce Highway does what highways do: it goes around. The sign says Maryborough, you read it at a hundred, and you keep going.
Behind the sign is one of Queensland’s oldest cities — and a set of Victorian streets that survived for the least romantic reason imaginable.
The river did all of this
Maryborough was settled in 1847. By 1859 it was an official port of entry to the colony, and more than twenty-two thousand immigrants first set foot in Australia here. Outside Sydney, few ports welcomed more people to the country.
Wool came down the Mary River to the wharves. Then timber. Then Gympie gold. The money stuck, and it built in brick and iron lace.
Then the boom moved on. That’s the part that matters. Towns that keep booming knock their old streets down and build newer ones. Towns that stop keep what they had. Nobody in Maryborough got around to demolishing the nineteenth century, so it’s still standing on Wharf Street.
Where Mary Poppins was born
Not London. Above a bank, on the corner, in Maryborough.
Helen Lyndon Goff was born in the manager’s quarters of the Australian Joint Stock Bank in 1899. Her father ran the bank downstairs — not terribly well, by most accounts — but he filled her head with stories. She grew up, took his name, and became P.L. Travers.
The building is now The Story Bank, the only museum in Australia devoted to Travers and her practically-perfect creation. Mary waits outside, at the crossing.
And a toilet done like the Sistine Chapel
The Cistern Chapel is a working public convenience painted in high Renaissance style, golden throne included. Michelangelo needed four years for his ceiling. This one took rather less, and there’s no queue for tickets.
It is, in its way, the most Maryborough thing in Maryborough: a town confident enough in its own history to make a joke on that scale and then keep the place mopped.
Worth the turn?
Thousands of people pass the exit every day without a second thought. A customs bond store with its original floors, the bedroom where Mary Poppins was invented, a warehouse full of art, the first steam locomotive ever built in Queensland, and the aforementioned toilet — all of it inside a couple of blocks of each other.
That’s the thing about the towns you drive past. Some of them are worth the turn.
What we visited
Bond Store Museum
Wharf Street
Where rum, brandy and tobacco sat under lock and key until the duty was paid. The timber floors are the original ones.
The Story Bank
Corner of Richmond and Kent Streets
The old Australian Joint Stock Bank. Helen Lyndon Goff was born in the manager's quarters in 1899, grew up to become P.L. Travers, and gave the world Mary Poppins. Australia's only museum devoted to her and her practically-perfect creation. Mary herself waits outside, at the crossing.
Gatakers Artspace
Wharf Street
The Gataker family's river-trade warehouse, now a gallery of local and touring artists. Free to wander.
The Cistern Chapel
A working public toilet done up in high Renaissance style, golden throne included. Michelangelo needed four years for his ceiling. This one took rather less, and you don't have to queue for tickets.
The Mary Ann
Queens Park
A working replica of the first steam locomotive built in Queensland. The original rolled out of a Maryborough foundry in 1873, hauling timber. She runs through the park.
Queens Park
Maryborough's front garden for a hundred and fifty years. Rotunda, giant figs, and the river sliding past.
Know a town people only see from the highway?
